A Greek choir of the
"disgusted" and the "outraged" predictably greeted
BRICS members Russia and China double veto to the
United Nations Security Council resolution
imposing regime change in Syria. The resolution
was backed by that haven of democracy, the GCC
League, the organization controlled by the six
monarchies/emirates of the Gulf Cooperation
Council formerly known as the Arab League.

United States Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton called the double veto a "travesty". Then
Clinton duly incited "friends of democratic Syria"
to keep working for regime change, which was the
object of the resolution. The copyright for this
idea is held by the liberator of Libya,
neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who

said Paris was already
working to create a NATOGCC "Friends of the Syrian
People Group" in charge of implementing the Arab
League's regime change plan.

Right on cue,
Paris puppet Burhan Ghalyun, the head of the
Syrian National Council (SNC) - the opposition
umbrella group - also summoned these countries
"friendly to the Syrian people". Everybody knows
who they are; the US, Britain, France, Israel and
GCC members Qatar and Saudi Arabia. With "friends"
like these, the "Syrian people" certainly don't
need enemies.

Those 'disgusting' BRICS
United States ambassador to the UN Susan
Rice - a top cheerleader of R2P, also known as
humanitarian bombing - called the double veto
"disgusting".

Even the venerable stones of
the Umayyad mosque in Damascus know that only
Washington has the right to wield veto power at
the UN - overwhelmingly to protect the state of
Israel's right to kill Palestinian men, women and
children with tanks and shelling without bothering
about pesky UN resolutions. [1]

Russia,
vocally - and China, silently - had been adamant
for weeks; forget about a UN resolution for regime
change in Syria, or worse yet, opening the doors
for a Libya-style NATO humanitarian bombing.

Russia has its own geopolitical reasons to
consider Syria a red line; Syria hosts Russia's
only naval base in the Mediterranean, in the port
of Tartus; and Syria buys Russian weapons. But in
fact all the five BRICS - plus the overwhelmingly
majority of the developing world - are in synch;
forget about regime change-enabling UN
resolutions, promoted by the usual suspect Western
trio US-Britain-France and - the summit of
hypocrisy - devised by the "democratic" House of
Saud and Qatar.

Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov will be in Damascus this Tuesday to
meet with President Bashar al-Assad and discuss a
serious plan to try to end the bloodshed. Lavrov
has calmly explained the reasons for the Russian
veto.

He had sent Russian amendments to
the draft resolution directly to Clinton; "The
rationality and objectivity of these amendments
should not cause anyone's doubt." But to no avail;
the resolution remained "unilateral" - demanding
nothing from Syrian anti-government armed groups.
Lavrov stressed, "No president with self-respect,
no matter how treated, will agree to surrender
inhabited localities to armed extremists without
resistance." Imagine if Homs was in Texas.

Still, the SNC now holds Moscow and
Beijing "responsible for the escalating acts of
killing and genocide", and facilitators of a
"license to kill". Lavrov is imperturbable; "We
have repeatedly said that we are not protecting
Assad but international law. The prerogative of
the UN Security Council does not envision
interference in internal processes."

Homs: Who's killing whom?Syria's UN ambassador Bashar Ja'afari strongly
denied the opposition's accusation of regime
forces bombing the Khadiliya neighborhood in Homs
with tanks and artillery and killing over 200
people - arguing that "no sensible person" would
launch such an attack the night before the UN
Security Council was discussing a resolution.
Without any preliminary investigation, France
called it a "massacre" and a "crime against
humanity". Like France's performance during the
Algerian war?

To understand what's at
stake, it's crucial to keep in mind who's
defecting from the Syrian army. Syria's top
military - also members of the Ba'ath Party - are
almost all Alawis, the folk Shi'ite sect (10% of
the overall population). They are not defecting.
The defectors are overwhelmingly Sunni troops
(70% of the overall population); they are forming
militias, Libya-style, heavily infiltrated by
mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, and fighting
government troops. The government's response has
been to target the neighborhoods where the
families of these defectors live. The center of
Homs nowadays is controlled by the rebels.

So what's really happening on the ground
in Homs? Here are sections from a crucial e-mail
sent by a trusted Syrian Christian source:

Many Syrians are ecstatic about the
double veto but Homs is very worrying. The
opposition spread news about a massacre just
before the vote and they quoted numbers in the
hundreds ... unbelievably quoted by all news
channels (all based on "activists") without any
verification, only to bring the number down to
something like 33 later. They never showed any
bombing or taking people under rubble or any
injured people ... just clean-bodied men with
their hands and feet tied up and shot mostly
once and only in their underwear. Whatever the
Syrian government has in its arsenal it seems
there are very intelligent bombs that can strip
and tie up people then shoot them in the head!!

The thing that we know fully well is
that there are no army presence in Homs. My
parents left the city then came back Saturday
morning on the day of the alleged massacre and
there was nothing. They usually call a hotline
(115) and ask if the roads are safe and security
operator will tell you to come to Homs or not.
This time they told them to come and indeed
there was nothing to be seen or heard. This of
course doesn't mean that most of the city and
particularly the old city is under the control
of the gunmen. Our old neighborhood where I grew
up (the Christian Bustan al-Diwan) was
completely taken over by the gunmen. YouTube
videos show how the FSA cleared the army
roadblock in the previous neighborhood (Bab
al-Dreib) and then proceeded to destroy the one
guarding our neighborhood.

People in my
neighborhood did not complain of any
major harassment or problem, however the
"revolutionaries" did indeed break into a couple
of homes that their people left either days
earlier or at the time, also into a school, Homs
Newspaper (operated by the Orthodox church for
more than 100 years) and a few other restaurants
but no other complaints. I mean, considering
what these FSA do to Alawites, then the
Christians are really getting very fair
treatment so far.

What many believe now
is that the bodies shown tied up and shot in
Khalidiya and which are alleged to be "men,
women and children" killed by a bombardment of
the Syrian army were nothing but kidnapped
Syrian soldiers. Add to them kidnapped Alawites
who were not liberated (or actually exchanged).
When the FSA kidnap some people, Alawites
started to kidnap in return to exchange the
prisoners. This doesn't always work and some
people who weren't "exchanged for" turned up
dead in Khalidiya.

All in all up to this
point there really isn't any offensive by the
Syrian army on the city. The rebels continue to
attack other checkpoints. People are completely
in the dark as to what the government is
thinking regarding Homs. It's devastating for me
to see my neighborhood become another
battleground and many of my friends
leaving.

All this dovetails with an
explanation by fine journalist Nir Rosen, author
of the indispensable Aftermath: Following the
Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim
World ; Homs is essentially a question of
rebels seizing government checkpoints - and
government forces shelling a few neighborhoods
with mortars. According to Rosen:

There was no fighting in Homs, just
shelling from these safe locations (from the
point of view of the regime), suggesting they
are unable to actually attack Khalidiya with
regime fighters ... No opposition fighters were
killed in the attack. And up to 130 people in
Khaldiyeh were killed and 800 wounded (like I
said not fighters). Now that's a lot of people
but if you were watching the news ... you would
think that Homs was destroyed while in fact this
attack can also be seen as a sign of the
regime's weakness in the city.

Compare
this with my Syrian source worried that "people
are completely in the dark as to what the
government is thinking regarding Homs".

Imagine an armed insurrection in a
mid-sized city in the US; the whole world saw how
peaceful Occupy Wall Street was dealt with by
billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg. The
"disgusting" BRICS have made it clear; there will
be no NATOGCC humanitarian bombing of Syria. But
NATOGCC may be succeeding in its plan B: to plunge
Syria into civil war.